“Hitchcock” is not a bad film, really, as much as it is a warped interpretation of a story that most people serious about film know fairly well. It’s as if audiences are seeing the events surrounding master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of “Psycho” as they are recreated through a funhouse mirror with thuddingly on-the-nose dialogue.

Anthony Hopkins plays Hitchcock, and the problem, of course, is that everyone knows what Hitchcock looked like and especially what he sounded like, and Hopkins doesn’t really come close to either. The film’s ace in the hole is Helen Mirren, playing Hitchcock’s wife and unsung collaborator, Alma Reville, and it’s because Hopkins and Mirren are fun to watch as they dig into their material (even if one of them doesn’t resemble who he’s playing even a little bit) that the movie’s worth seeing at all.

The film depicts Hitchcock’s career struggle after “North by Northwest” is one of his biggest hits. His decision to adapt Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho” as his next film is rejected by the major studios for being too graphic, so Hitchcock films it on the cheap, using his own money and sets and crew from his popular television show. As the filming takes its toll on Hitchcock and financial worries pile up, he is also bothered by his wife’s creative collaboration with another screenwriter (Danny Huston) and the possibility of an affair.

The film takes a surface-level look at the man — his obsessions with his leading ladies, his concern over his weight and his inner darkness, here personified in a thudding device by imaginary conversations with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott), whose actions inspired “Psycho” — and a light, jokey tone. I wouldn’t have expected a Hitchcock biopic to take an almost farcical feel, or, at least, the sort of comedy in which all of the jokes are obvious and telegraphed, shot in the sort of style that lifts shots from “Psycho” as homage without any true visual inspiration. Put simply, “Hitchcock” just isn’t up to the level of the man who inspired it.

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“Hitchcock” is not a bad film, really, as much as it is a warped interpretation of a story that most people serious about film know fairly well. It’s as if audiences are seeing the events surrounding master filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s filming of “Psycho” as they are recreated through a funhouse mirror with thuddingly on-the-nose dialogue.

Anthony Hopkins plays Hitchcock, and the problem, of course, is that everyone knows what Hitchcock looked like and especially what he sounded like, and Hopkins doesn’t really come close to either. The film’s ace in the hole is Helen Mirren, playing Hitchcock’s wife and unsung collaborator, Alma Reville, and it’s because Hopkins and Mirren are fun to watch as they dig into their material (even if one of them doesn’t resemble who he’s playing even a little bit) that the movie’s worth seeing at all.

The film depicts Hitchcock’s career struggle after “North by Northwest” is one of his biggest hits. His decision to adapt Robert Bloch’s novel “Psycho” as his next film is rejected by the major studios for being too graphic, so Hitchcock films it on the cheap, using his own money and sets and crew from his popular television show. As the filming takes its toll on Hitchcock and financial worries pile up, he is also bothered by his wife’s creative collaboration with another screenwriter (Danny Huston) and the possibility of an affair.

The film takes a surface-level look at the man — his obsessions with his leading ladies, his concern over his weight and his inner darkness, here personified in a thudding device by imaginary conversations with serial killer Ed Gein (Michael Wincott), whose actions inspired “Psycho” — and a light, jokey tone. I wouldn’t have expected a Hitchcock biopic to take an almost farcical feel, or, at least, the sort of comedy in which all of the jokes are obvious and telegraphed, shot in the sort of style that lifts shots from “Psycho” as homage without any true visual inspiration. Put simply, “Hitchcock” just isn’t up to the level of the man who inspired it.